Being Manball, what are the requirements?

I have been thinking about our transition to Manball and I wonder if you can just start doing Manball without becoming Manball. I imagine a few things in the transformation like:

Hanlon walking around like Burgess Merdith in Rocky yelling in a raspy voice to the lineman that they need to "eat lightning and crap thunder"

Running backs carrying FJ on their backs while running through drills, like Luke carrying Yoda on Dagobah, while he imparts thoughts like "be the offspring of Bo Jackson and Barry Sanders before the 4000 yard season you can"

Lewan actually getting hurt from the cage match fight with Borges for not sufficiently drive blocking and not from training drills

I assume there is a book for how to live Manball, not sure if the board has any thoughts on what Manball requires or how to live Manball.

Hoke's two offenses that were successful played very little "manball". It helped that SDSU played six of the twenty worse Ds in the country last year + a 4-7 FCS school.

Hoke's a talking head giving his audience what they want to hear. I cringe when I listen to him because half the time it sounds like he's talking to someone who has never watched a game of football in their life.

this? In fact all the evidence to me shows that he believes every word, and repeats it because it means something to him. I don't really see a calculating guy when I see Hoke, I doubt that he is doing this on purpose at all.

It helped that SDSU played six of the twenty worse Ds in the country last year + a 4-7 FCS school.

SDSU plays in a small conference, so they invariably play some terrible defenses. It's not like their schedule suddenly got easier last year. Nor did they have, on paper, much more talent than anyone else in their conference. They played pretty much the same caliber of teams as always, with pretty much the same caliber of players as usual, only this time they set some offensive records.

Also put up 35 points against the #1 scoring D in the country. But since he did it in a more traditional scheme, it's not as impressive? Not trying to start anything, but what did UM do against good defenses last year? Oh right, they put up lots of yards.

No, all it requires is taking Hoke's own words at face value. Basically everyone agrees that they hope a lot of Hoke's talk of downhill running and compressed fullback spines and "return to Michigan football" is nothing but coachspeak, since this team isn't built for that stuff and attempting it any time in the next two years will be ugly. It's just odd that Hoke's strongest supporters lead off their defense by claiming that Hoke's speeches are intentionally misleading.

Now, SDSU's offense has indicated that Hokeball is not manball - but then again Hoke himself has said "Michigan is different", and I rather doubt his "POWER!!!" rhetoric was quite so tuned up at SDSU. So who knows until fall?

Anyway I don't think MANBALL is directed so much at Hoke or Borges (clearly, Borges has never really run a manball scheme), rather it's a barb at the section of the fanbase that believes anything other than three yards and a cloud of dust is sacriligious. And anyone who claims that segment of the fanbase and that attitude doesn't exist, or that that segment had nothing to do with the fall of RR and hiring of Hoke to replace him, is just as ignorant of reality as those who are unaware of SDSU's shotgun 4 wideout sets.

Hoke's speeches aren't intentionally misleading. I don't think he is playing to his audience or hiding anything at all. What he says does not contradict what he did at SDSU. It's more that Brian and others have misunderstood what he's said - specifically, when he said that he did not believe in using zone blocking 100 percent of the time (something that everyone, RR included, would agree), Brian interpreted this to mean "0 percent of the time." If he had actually watched SDSU play, he would not have come to that conclusion.

He also called the spread, with obvious derision, "basketball on grass".

But anyway, why do we assume that Michigan 2011 offense will be SDSU 2010 offense? Did Hoke spend as much time talking about power running at his press conferences in San Diego? He certainly didn't talk about "returning to Michigan football" in San Diego.

Anyway, the fact remains that most people here don't think Hoke will actually run "manball", and even Brian has called it a "platonic ideal". But Hoke's rhetoric certainly implies "manball", and is clearly designed to win the support of the fans who think football = statue QBs, handoff runs between the tackles, and Big Ten championships against outmatched opponents followed by embarrassing losses in the Rose Bowl.

So in that sense "manball" is a useful term to describe the idyll to which Hoke must pay homage, even if it doesn't represent a real thing we'll see on the field.

Are passing ones? The true running one is pretty rare. Even Auburn didn't run it with their QB THAT much. Other than Rich, it's been Tebow Florida, and Oregon, mainly. Doesn't mean it hasn't worked successfully, but spread is a broad term.

And you talk to people, and hear that Hoke was basically running a Michigan program at SDS, so saying he wants to run one at Michigan isn't all that strange.

And your characterizing of what some fans think football is really is as silly as saying the "wussball" represents going 15-22, losing to your rivals by multiple touchdowns, and only beating Purdue in November, with embarrassing losses in the Gator Bowl, if you make a bowl". Which is completely unfair, and ignores the success lots of spread teams have had. Just as that view ignores teams like Alabama and USC that have own with MANBALL. (I should trademark that....)

Of course my characterization of manball is nonsensical. That's the whole point. There is an element of the fanbase (often with deep pockets) that are firm believers that the spread is not real football and will never work in the Big Ten. And they would probably take your moniker of "wussball" to accurately describe the Rich Rod scheme (how often did we hear griping about how "small" our players were?).

They are fools. But they exist, and seem to have the ear of the AD (hell, the AD may even be one of them, since he hasn't been involved in football since his glory days with Bo and yet seems to want to inject himself personally into the day-to-day affairs of the football team - I think Hoke knows football has changed since 1969, I'm not sure DB does). Hoke does well to play to this audience, as long as he doesn't try to turn Denard into John Navarre (which I don't think he wil).

Anyway my point is that MANBALL is a perfect term to describe the mythic schemes of yore championed by the sort of people who reflexively deride innovation as newfangled hooey that will never work in the Big Ten. It is unlikely to describe the 2011 Michigan offense.

first, which, as the basic offensive football play, should come first, where has he ever said MANBALL? He's talked about toughness, but damn, I hope that's not lip service, I'd like to see more toughness, on both sides of the ball. I'd like to be able to convert 3rd and 1 without going into a shotgun that has a 50-50 chance of losing yards rather than gaining one. Or have 4 shots at the goalline, and you know, get in. Or not let a team run every single play in a half. Toughness isn't necessarily a bad thing. So no, not everybody hopes it's just coachspeak. Coachspeak was hearing it before, and not seeing it. I hope he can institute it.

Now do I hope for 100% MANBALL with the current personnel? No. But then I don't hope for it with any personnel. I hope this time around we mold the talent to the players we have, while teaching them new things, meshing the systems in transition, rather than just jumping into the fire. But even when it's all Hoke's guys, I would hope (and think) we won't be all 3 yards and a cloud of dust. Lloyd, for his conservative nature, passed more than he ran in the end. With a more passing scheme offensive, I would think we would too.

So, I don't think we've heard as much as some have, and in some respects, it's a good thing, and in others, it's not really that different than what we were doing under Rich. The difference was when Rich would say it, no one would believe it except places like this that would point out the running numbers, and now everyone believes it, to the extent that the same people forget what we were doing before, that they were defending it, and now thinking it was a bad thing. The main difference is we're hopefully not depending on our QB to do it until he breaks anymore.

I think the idiot is the person who thinks changing coaches is going to transform a team from not tough to tough. Or that saying you're going to be a tough team is sufficient (if you believe this, you're the fucking idiot, not me). That's assuming our teams weren't tough to begin with, which is ridiculous.

If someone was cool enough to take all the best clips of spring practice, throw in some 80's hard rock music, and turn it into a MANBALL MONTAGE of Rocky-style TRAINING to beat Ivan Drago - I mean, Ohio State.....that would be amazing

To take the serious route on Manball, I look at it like this. Manball is what Wisconsin played against us last year. They ran it and ran it and ran it. It's doing what you want and the other team can't to anything about it. It's not about a gimmick offense that tries to put players in wide open spaces. It's one on one,beating your guy and nothing they can do about it.

So actually, there's a slight edge to pro-styles teams, if you've been watching the last decade. But suffice to say, it's pretty close, and you can win with any offense if ran well. The real difference? Just about all those teams (other than Auburn...and maybe LSU in '07) had really good defenses...

I'm curious which Auburn and Oregon teams you are talking about that had impotent offenses against good teams. Seriously I would love to know this. Oregon was held under 37 points twice, and Auburn put up massive stats in the best conference in college football. Neither team had a particluarly great defense yet their offenses carried them to undefeated regular seasons.

Yeah, I totally agree. It's a battle of wills. It's about not giving in. I don't think it has to do with physical strength necessarily as it may imply. I do think there's an aspect, especially on the line of scrimmage, of beating up your opponent. I view it as more of a philosophy: a way of life.

"It's not about a gimmick offense that tries to put players in wide open spaces."

I'm sorry but that makes zero sense to me. I hope our offense puts lots of people in open space. What would the alternative be? Hoping our wide recievers are always covered and our running backs have no holes to run through. Yeah, that sounds much better.

Also, it is not a gimmick, just becasue most people don't understand it does not make it a gimmick. It might not be" smash mouth" in your face football, but it involves out smarting the defense not just running them over everyone still has to block. You say you want to beat a guy one on one, well hell if you do that on offense that means that there is one guy left unblocked to take on the ball carrier. That is why good offenses almost always have at least one guy that requires the defense to commit an extra defender to them. Guys like Denard and Braylon who required an extra guy to help, that opens up someone else. That leaves someone else in wide open space which is why we had guys wide open last year because to steal a saying I learned from Mattison when I was younger we "changed the math" to take away one of their guys. Can you do that with a prostyle offense? Yes, but it requires elite players at the skill positions and outside of Denard we don't have those guys.

What happens to teams like Wisconsin when they can't run the ball and impose their will? When teams can line up against them and go one on one or change the math in favor of the defense? They tend to lose those games (I am from WI and have seen it many, many times)That is why manball is not always a good idea and why we really won't run it as much as people think. Or just go out there and play linebacker and let Odoms crack block you, then come back and tell me that isn't whatever the hell manball is.

"What happens when teams like Wisconsin when they can't run or impose their will?"

What happens is they could lose. I never said that Manball will make you undefeated. Teams lose somtimes no matter what offense they run. I was just tired of seeing us look awesome on the first drive and then get figured out and not even score again. Against good teams anyway.

or it could have to do with the fact that we might score on the first drive, punt the next three and the other team would be winning 28-7. At that point your game plan is pretty much shot to shit and when you're a running football team a 21 point deficit is hard to overcome with that first year QB.

I don't get this argument and it needs to stop. The reason we, as well as most college teams, score less points later in the year is because they play better defenses. We played pretty much the same schedule as we do every year and we scored quite a few points. I don't remember anyone saying the offense was bad chad henne's senior year when they only scored 3 points against OSU

Oh, they averaged 25 points per game. What did our sputtering offense average for the year? Also, its funny we question why our offense scored late in games and then take half this post to trumpet SDSU's offensive output against TCU (as they were down 3 scores most of the game)

You are correct other teams figured it out to a degree. I was thinking more about the fans who say it is a gimmick, they are the ones that don't understand what is going on. While our offense did slow down you can't really blame it all on them. It is hard to make adjustments when you are only on the sideline for three plays and the other team scores a TD. (Plus sometimes I think we were just to bullheaded to change) There was also a lot of pressure on them to score 50 every game and I think that sometimes that pushed the young guys to try and do to much. Figure in crappy field position all the time because of giving up TD and then only getting to the 20 on an even worse KR. Those things are hard to overcome when you are playing against a team that is talented and well coached. But, yes all college coaches have figured out how to stop (or at least slow them down) the spread, except maybe Ron English. Not all of them have the talent to do it though.

They can't be, they are a one back set. Which means no FB and three WR. According to what I have been reading that would make it a gimmick. However, the QB lines up under center most of the time, but they still run some gun. I really don't know if they run enough from under center to over come the three WR's on the field though. Someone should make an equation of how much FB you need on the field. Perhaps if you run it with two TE's that will make up for the lack of a FB. Also, I could be mistaken but I believe they run some zone blocking, which would be a strike against manball. Other than all of those issues I would say it's probably as close to manball as you can get.

How do all of these seasoned MGoBlog readers (looking at you, jmblue) still not get Brian? He's a cranky, sarcastic, deeply loyal, and frequently pessimistic young cuss who occasionally gets his bitch on. So what?

The only thing dumber than trying to figure out how to run MANBALL, as if that were a real thing that actually existed in reality that is real, is complaining that Brian is being no fairsies to Brady Hoke by invoking the MANBALL meme.

The annoying part about the "manball" meme to me isn't that it's unfair to Brady Hoke. If Brian doesn't like him, that's up to him. There are certainly players/coaches I don't like.

The annoying part about "manball" is that it's inaccurate and - as you can see in this thread - gives the wrong impression about Michigan football. It's like if I started calling Rodriguez's offense a "passing spread." Well...no. It's not.

Whereas "Tacopants" was an accurate description of an actual player on the Michigan roster.

MANBALL is snark, a joke. It is not what we will run (not even Brian suggests that) - it is what crotchety blue-hairs think we should run, what they think is Michigan Football run by Michigan Men. When they hear "toughness" and "downhill running", it is visions of MANBALL that make them tingly in their Depends. It is why they hoorahed the hiring of Hoke and harrumphed the rise of Rodriguez.

You are not the target of the critique inherent in the MANBALL meme, nor is Al Borges, and not really Brady Hoke. Stop taking it so seriously, because most of the people who do are the ones who get so irritated by its use.

I create content and marketing campaigns online for every kind of website under the sun. Brian is in the upper 1% of all writers I read on a daily basis. The best sports blogger bar none. He is all those things you say and also infuriating at times. But he gets the joke and I think everyone reading needs to as well. Definitely have to appreciate the quality. Throw in Tom's recruiting and the grade out of every play for football games, and you have a hell of a place for the fans.

I truly don't think that the manball is the kind of offense U of M will run. I think it will probably look like what the spred and shred was supposed to look like under the old regime. There is a reason that the last guys really went after Devin Gardner. They only used 60 % of the playbook last year. I personally wanted to see more hback/TE sets, some I form power sets in the red zone. This was stuff they practiced, just never got implemented. Honestly though, the reason some of us use the manball meme is because this kind of rhetoric, coupled with the Michigan Man crap will kill the program.

as a side note, can someone tell me what a pro style offense is. when i watch pro football, i see alot of 3 and 4 receiver sets. I see qb's spending significant time in shotgun formations. I see alot of zone blocking being deployed with other schemes. I don't see alot of " Downhill running" in the old meaning of the term. I see alot of slot receivers making plays in space, i see alot of runningbacks catching passes out of the backfeild. Whether or not the bluehairs or talking heads on CFL want to admit it, the spread has made it way into pro ball, hybrid offenses are the way of the future,we shouldn't be holding on to vestigial schemes, we should be innovators you know.......the leaders and the best

There's a difference between the "spread" and players having a hoolahoop or two worth of space to occupy in the field. In a nut shell, generally teams employ the spread in order to use pretty simplistic plays, where the tempo of play and alignment of players creates bubbles for the offense to go after. Meanwhile pro style offenses are more likely to use more sophistocated/(And more in general) route combinations to create bubbles in the defense. There's really not much of a difference between run games, although option running teams generally fall more under spread teams than anything else. Neither is really more or less creative by nature (See: Oregon and Boise State), and there's tons of overlap between the two. If you want to look at a team that is near purely pro style, look at Stanford last year.

We already had our innovator, he just couldn't get the support he needed/get players to execute fundamentals at a half-way acceptable rate. And if Hoke does the opposite he'll be wildly more succesfull.

I thought the overall principle behind the spread was to create 1on 1 matchups with defenders. i see this alot with the combo routes that are preferred in the passing schemes used by the NFL. the Larry szonka/Earl Campbell style running back is extinct in the Nfl as far as i can tell. It is also somewhat mystical that people think the running qb is some new spread derivative that has never worked in the NFL. Steve Young, Steve McNair, and Donovan Mcnabb did alright . I have stated before, if given the choice between Warren Moon, and Steve Young, ill take Steve young everytime

That's what I mean with bubbles, that was poor word choice on my part as it was pretty vague. By "spreading" the field you can, for example, create a bubble on the edge (CB vs. Slot and Split receiver) where you can toss a bubble screen out to. While a pro style attack would run a Smash (Corner + Hitch) route combination to isolate the corner and force a decision. Those are just the two extremes I think. Chip Kelly and Rich Rod (more so) are the two closest to an end of the spectrum I've seen, their whole game is almost entirely alignment based.

Yes, the MANBALL business is unfair to Brady Hoke and a bit annoying. But, how can anyone not at least see the *attempt* at humor here? If you negged it, I'm assuming that completely escaped you. I actually thought it was pretty funny.

It was funny until it got to the "Rocky" reference (which was very early in the post), because "Rocky" is one of the worst sports movies of all-time. Any boxing movie in which punches cause people to spin 360 degrees is worthless. If I wanted to watch fighting that unrealistic, I'd just fire up "Street Fighter II" and SONIC BOOM my way to a championship.

Here's a thought, if you don't like "manball" (a stupid name to begin with) then don't follow the team. Some of us (myself included) didn't like the Spread and yet I still watched and supported the team. Shut up and do the same.

I'm sure there are people who don't like manball, but personally my beef is that we won't actually be running MANBALL at all and people keep insisting that we will. Wisconsin runs manball. Borges slung it all over the place last season out of spread sets with one of the highest YPA in the country.

I have been a long time reader of this blog and other Michigan blogs and have finally decided to start posting because I am at unease with the current state that this fanbase is in.

I was genuinely upset when Rodriguez was let go because I thought that at Michigan we were different from other programs. We gave our coaches more than three years to allow them to show what they were capable of. I was also frustrated with the unfair treatment he and the team received from the media and from vocal segments of the fanbase. I believed that given time his offense was capable of achieving special things that we had only seen done to us by Oregon in 2007, when I watched with horror from the stands. I supported him in conversations with other Michigan fans, many less patient than I. I supported him to the shock of people I meet who are not fans of Michigan and assume that we have a monolithic view of our program.

That all being said, Rodriguez is not the coach and he is not going to be the coach again. The page has turned and we all need to let go of petty squabbles about that which we have no control. It also means allowing a new coach to get a chance that was not provided to our previous coach. It means not being petulant whiners or making snarky comments. It means providing reasoned support for the coach when there is no evidence that he is incapable of being the answer to righting the ship. I do not suggest that Hoke should be immune to criticism where and when it is warranted, but we should all give him a chance to at least see what he can do.

I for one hope that we can enter the long period of anticipation with reasonable expectations for next season on both sides. Unabashed Hoke supporters should realize that this team is not winning the national title nor will it be likely to even play for a Big Ten title. Detractors should realize that we are also unlikely to be a bad team either. There is enough talent on this team to perform reasonably well next year. That is all we can expect and all we should expect at this point.

I don't think the fight is over whether the team will be good. Reasonable people can differ about that. The fight between the Hoke supporters and those who haven't drank the Kool-Aid is about 2 things: (1) whether the hiring of Hoke means Michigan is "back" (no evidence of this so far); and (2) whether Michigan was ever gone when Rod was the coach (it wasn't to most readers of this site, who breathe with their mouth closed).

So I say to your post, on the one hand, you are missing the point of all of the vitriol, which makes you lucky, and on the other hand, hahahahhaha b/c you are pretty naive to ask this crew to stop fighting about something that defines today's Michigan fans.